The glycopolymer code: synthesis of glycopolymers and multivalent carbohydrate-lectin interactions.

Glycopolymers are becoming more and more important in understanding biological interactions due to their unique recognition properties. Macromolecules with different chain lengths, compositions and architectures provide enormous diversity in the formation of primary and secondary structures that have a major effect on multivalent binding to lectins. It is crucial to control the precise structure of macromolecules to achieve specific and selective carbohydrate-lectin binding. The use of advanced synthesis techniques to prepare well-defined glycopolymers and selected advanced analytical techniques to study multivalent interactions are highlighted in this Feature Article.